The marketing world never stands still and the past 12 months have been no exception. The fast rate of development and customer uptake in the fields of social media and mobile have kept us all on our toes in 2011 and, as always, have provided new and exciting ways to engage customers.

But let’s not focus too much on what has happened in 2011 and look ahead to see what developments we think 2012 will bring.

This time we sat down with the whole Brinn team to pull together our list of marketing predictions for 2012. We came up with a huge list, which included everything from the sublime to the irrelevant right thought to the completely ridiculous! Instead of exposing you to all of these, and in the interests of brevity, we have instead carefully chosen our top 5 marketing predictions for 2012.

As always please contribute your own predictions in the comments section.

Here they are:

1. Huge Growth in Mobile Commerce and Marketing

Predicted by: Ally

In January this year I made my top five marketing predictions for 2011. I promised I would come back and review these towards the end of the year and, amazingly, we are now pretty much there. So will I feel all powerful with my fantastic ability to predict the future. Or will I be left feeling rather embarrassed like the leader of a religious cult who has wrongly predicted the end of the world? Let’s find out!

1. Price and value will be key communication messages

“Brands and retailers will be keen to communicate good value in 2011”

This prediction was bang on (if I do say so myself!). As high inflation and sluggish growth in the economy continued to bite, brands focussed on value as a key communication message. Organisations that were already perceived to be value brands hit the message home even harder (with the strapline ‘beat the VAT rise’ being used it seemed by almost everyone in January and February).

But even the more premium brands and retailers focused on value as a key marketing message. John Lewis continued to create powerful advertising campaigns centered round their ‘never knowingly undersold’ proposition.

The already price competitive supermarket chains also tried even harder to promote themselves as the best value with a range of ‘Price Promise’ initiatives. New Tesco Chief Executive Philip Clarke was also keen to focus on promoting value in new ways.

Verdict = Bang On!

2. Social and mCommerce will Become More Prominent

“As the uptake of smart phones and social networking continues to grow exponentially, expect to see both of these provide new ways for us to consume products”

I was making two points here – that ecommerce will spread and merge into the areas of social media and also mobile. I would say I was right with mobile but it’s still too early to tell with social media.

On the mobile front, the growth of web content consumption via mobile devices has been huge. For all of our clients’ websites we’re seeing around 10% of traffic coming in on mobile devices now (up from about 3% this time last year). This will no doubt continue to rise and it has already had huge implications on the ecommerce marketplace. Almost all of the large online retailers now have mobile stores or apps that allow consumers to browse and buy much more easily on a mobile device. This will continue to grow exponentially and if you run an online store without a mobile store format then I’m afraid to say it won’t be long before you get left behind.

On the social media front things have been much more underwhelming. Sure, a few online retailers have launched online store offerings directly through Facebook, but it’s yet to become commonplace or take off in any real way. I would also argue that there is no real sign of this imminent movem towards social commerce is either. Integration with social media sites on ecommerce websites is becoming not only commonplace but also pretty much vital… but as for purchasing directly through Facebook, results have been pretty poor.

Verdict = Right AND Wrong

3. Smaller Groups and Smaller Networks are the Way Forward

“Although social networking platforms such as Facebook continue to grow their user base, consumers will begin to split their networks into smaller groups or use a selection of new, niche social networking platforms to engage with different groups they’re involved with”

On a personal level, this year I’ve noticed more and more the difficulty and frustration of using Facebook when many different social groups are all in the one place. I have close friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and family on Facebook but I don’t want to share the same information with all of them. Despite making a number of changes to how this is managed in Facebook, it’s still cumbersome and difficult to implement and there’s been no real progress on this front.

Google + was launched in the summer, which focuses on making the separation of different social networks much easier by allowing users to separate groups into different social ‘circles’. The launch of this platform was much anticipated and there is already a staggering 50 million users on Google +. However usage levels of the new platform by users still appear to be low as we all try to work out quite how it actually works!

This idea of separating social networks is still an extremely pertinent subject and one I believe will happen and will have big marketing implications in the future. Progress in 2011 has been slow and it’s still too early to tell what shape this will take.

Verdict = Not yet Clear

4. Online Search will Change (Nothing New There Then!)

“Online search is continually changing and when it comes to optimising websites for search engines this means the goal posts are always moving”

When I read this prediction back I though to myself ‘Duh! Of course online search will change – it’s always changing’. Maybe I just put this in to make sure I was right with at least one of my predictions!

And I was right – online search has continued to change and evolve with Google, as always, leading the way. Twitter updates were included in search results (before being removed again), ‘official’ sites were given more prominence at the top of the rankings and Google’s Panda 2.5 algorithm update appears to have reduced the benefit of link building from low quality directory and article sites. This all has implications on the way we effectively optimize our websites for search and look out for more changes, and more changes, and more changes to come.

Verdict = Bang On!

5. TV Advertising will make a Comeback?

“With online streaming, digital TV streaming and the new advertising model for sites such as YouTube, there is now once again space for the traditional TV advertising format”

We’ve all talked for so long about the death of TV advertising but I predicted that 2011 would be a year we began to realise that there’s still great benefit to be had from the 30-second TV ad format. I think it’s fair to say this prediction was correct. Firstly, with the growth of on demand and online television as well as the advertising now used on sites such as YouTube, the 30-second TV ad format has seen resurgence in popularity over online banner advertising and other forms of online advertising. Secondly, I feel advertisers have begun to fall in love with the TV ad format all over again. Firms like British Airways and John Lewis have put a lot of budget into creating adverts that really resonate with consumers and highlight the value of the brand. I think John Lewis have been much more successful than British Airways at actually achieving this but that’s a story for another day. One thing I clear though – the TV advert is here to stay.

Verdict = Bang On!

Just like Nostradamus himself I can’t be 100% correct all of the time! Overall though I’m pleased that the majority of my 2011 predictions were on the ball.

There’s always a lot of talk about the latest marketing methods and how they will completely rewrite the way we promote our businesses. For the past couple of years that talk has centered round social media and this was reflected in my top marketing predictions for 2011. Interestingly though, important a marketing tool as it is, it hasn’t completely re-written the rulebook. Yes social media is important but the fundamental principles of marketing are still the same and a lot of the other tools we’ve used for 50 years plus are still equally important in running a successful marketing campaign.

The lesson to take from this is that in a fast-moving discipline like marketing it’s important to stay up to date with the latest tools available - but just make sure you don’t forget about the old ones, they can be just as effective.

What will my predictions be for 2012? Well you don’t have to wait too long too find out - I’ll follow this post up with my 2012 predictions before the end of the year.

As I’ve said many times in the past - SEO is a bit of a black art. Most of us know it’s a really important part of any good online marketing strategy but very few of us actually know what’s involved in making a site rank no1 in the major search engines for our selected key terms.

The fundamental reason for this comes from the very top – the search engines themselves. Google is by far the largest search engine so lets use them as an example. Google, like all search engines, have their own unique algorithm to determine where a site ranks. The algorithm calculates where a site should rank according to a huge number of factors. Each of these factors (and there are 100’s) is given a different weight or importance in the algorithm. Get all of these factors right and you’ll dominate the search engines. However, this is much easier said than done – mainly because Google keeps their algorithm, and the factors involved in ranking at the top, highly secretive. So essentially, SEO is a guessing game. Over time SEO companies get better and understanding what these ranking factors are through trial and error… but then Google will change the rules, which they often do!

Google have to do this because if we knew the rules we’d all build sites and optimise them in exactly the same way and they would have no way of ranking sites effectively.

Because of all this SEO companies are also highly secretive. They don’t want to give away exactly what they’re doing because then they’d give away their competitive advantage over other SEO companies who have not worked out how to ‘play’ the search engines quite as well.

The problem with everything I’ve just explained above, and it’s a problem I’m sure you’re all too aware of, is that this leads to many SEO companies offering services that can be quite misleading. If an SEO company doesn’t tell you what’s involved in their service, which most won’t, then it can be extremely difficult to know which companies are offering true value for money. The sad truth is that, some SEO companies will sell a service to you that involves very little actual work for the company, offers little in the way of results and is expensive for what you’re (not) getting.

Ok so I’ve probably scared you away from SEO forever now, but never fear. What I want to do is give some practical tips and advice on how to pick the best SEO company that will give you real value for money.

Educate yourself

The more you know about what’s actually involved in SEO then the more you will be able to suss out what a company is offering you. I know it’s a bit of effort but spending just 2 hours scouring the internet or dipping into an SEO book will pay you back in droves because you will be so much better equipped to choose a better provider. When the difference between a good SEO company and a bad one is either success that will generate real business for you or expensive failure that will achieve nothing, then this education is well worth the time invested. You’re reading this blog post so that’s a good start!

Proper keyword analysis and selection

When in discussions with an SEO provider, make sure to discuss the selection of keywords you would like to optimise your site for. If they suggest key terms for you then ask them the number of monthly searches completed for this term. If you’re paying good money for SEO then I suggest you find a provider that analyses search trends and finds key terms that they can optimise your site for that have significant monthly search traffic. I’ve often spoken to businesses that have told me they rank no1 in Google for a certain term, which sounds impressive. However when we go and do the keyword analysis on this it emerges that barely anyone (if anyone at all) is searching or optimising for that term. It’s easy to optimise a site for a term that no one else is optimising for but it provides no benefit to the client. In my opinion, effective keyword selection is the most important factor in effective SEO so make sure you ask about it.

Details, details, details

I mentioned in the start of this post that, for good reason, most SEO companies won’t tell you every last detail of what their process is. However, you should be weary of an SEO provider that won’t tell you anything at all. This is where a bit of SEO education comes in handy. Ask more specific questions than just ‘what’s involved in SEO?’ If the company does link building then ask about their process for sourcing links – do they have a current network of links that they will add your site to or do they go out looking for linking opportunities specific to your industry? If they are doing your on-page SEO then ask for an analysis of your site as it is at the moment and ask what they would like to change on the site to improve SEO.

Clear reporting

Before you engage with an SEO company make sure they will give you ranking reports on a monthly basis at least with comments and analysis on the past months performance and what needs to improved in following months to keep progressing. If link building is part of your SEO package then ensure you get a monthly linking report detailing all the links sourced in the past month. For the first couple of months check a few of the links they provide and check the quality of site and link they have sourced. Some link building companies paste spammy links on forums for instance, which quickly get deleted by the forums webmaster and provide little in the way of SEO results. Look for good quality links and non-spammy posts.

Overnight success is not possible

Be weary of companies offering instant success. SEO success is not something that can be achieved overnight and it will usually take up to 12-18 months to get to your end goal. SEO companies offering overnight success will either not deliver, offer very temporary success or will achieve a no1 ranking that no one is searching for. The only potential time to accept this offer is if you don’t have to pay until they get the result because you have less to lose in that situation… but even then I’d make sure you lay out all the details of the contract carefully.

Have they called you or have you called them?

Just a small final observation I’ve made over the years. It never ceases to amaze me how many SEO companies call us trying to sell us services that we already provide in house! Sometimes I’ll engage in conversation with them to do a bit of ‘competitor analysis’ and find out what they’re actually offering. Now it wouldn’t be fair to say any company that calls you out of the blue trying to sell SEO is a bad one, but in my experience you’re better spending the time to seek out a company online rather than engaging in conversation with those bombarding you with calls. Do an online search for SEO companies – if a company’s top when searching for SEO then they must be doing something right!

I hope you found this helpful but, if you can’t be bothered doing all of this research, then I’ve heard of a really good SEO company called Brinn Marketing. You should give them a call…

Any other tips on picking a good SEO company then, as always, leave a comment!

We’re constantly told how important link building is but very few of us understand how to actually build quality links to our websites. Here are five simple link building strategies you can implement today:

 

Link Building Explained

Search Engines rank websites according to two broad factors - on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page factors relate to your website itself. If you’ve done your keyword analysis, your site is well coded, well structured and has lots of relevant content on it then you have the building blocks in place to be a hit with the search engines. Crucially though, getting these on-page factors right is not enough to get first page rankings. To achieve this you also need to work on your off-page factors – these relate to building a stream of quality links to your site.

Search engines see any link that comes to you from an external website as a vote. Put simply, the more votes you get then the higher up you go in the search engines. If you’re lucky enough to have a website that is already a huge hit or has lots of people talking then you’ll naturally have many people linking to it as they suggest your website to others across the web. However most of us aren’t that lucky and so we have to work at it.

It is also worth noting that the internet is not a true democracy. Some votes from highly ranked, reputable websites are given a much heavier weighting than others coming from lower ranked websites. In addition, having too many links from low ranked websites can begin to have a negative impact on your sites ranking.
 

How do I know if Websites are Highly Ranked?

This is actually fairly simple. Search Engines assign a Page Rank to websites, which is a number from 0 to 10 – the higher the number, then the higher the ranking of that site, and the more benefit you will get if that site links to yours. Reputable, high traffic websites such as the BBC News site have very highly rated Page Rank ratings but, lets face it, it’s not going to be easy to convince the BBC to link to your site (although not impossible)! Equally, many directories that are purely set up to provide free back links for websites have a low Page Rank and can often be seen as ‘link farming’ websites, which are viewed negatively by Search Engines.

*There are many free page rank checking tools you can use to identify the Page Rank of websites you’re thinking of linking to.

So what you want to do is build a mix of links to your site with links from moderately and highly ranked websites. But what is actually involved in building quality back links? Below are five simple link-building strategies that will begin to help you understand how it’s done.

 

Strategy 1: Commenting on Relevant Industry Blogs

Search engines love blogs, and by posting your link on highly ranked blogs you will get instant SEO benefit (without a huge amount of effort involved). To create back-links on blogs, you should:

- Identify blogs that have a high Page Rank, are relevant to your industry and provide ‘do follow’ links (these are the type of blogs where a link to your website will be counted as a vote).

- Take the time to read the posts on each blog you’ve identified and find a post you feel knowledgeable enough about to make a relevant comment related to the subject matter of the post.

- In your comment include a link with relevant anchor text such as your keyword. You can include your link within the website URL form box as well as within the comment itself (if allowed). When creating a back-link, ensure you use anchor text to describe the website you are directing people to. To do this, you need to include a bit of HTML code to create your back-link in with anchor text:

<a href=http://www.yourwebsitesite.com>type keyword here</a>

- Repeat this process on an ongoing basis on many different industry blogs.
 

Strategy 2: Identifying Reputable Directory Back-links

Directory submissions are the most well-known and practiced form of link building for those looking to quickly increase their search engine ranking. That’s because, although fairly tedious, submitting to directories is simple and doesn’t involve much thinking! Directory submissions can be part of an effective link building campaign but there is one thing to keep in mind when using them:

Search engines don’t like to see an instant flood of irrelevant links pointing to your website and prefer to see a pattern of increased links over an extended period of time. Always select a relevant industry category to place your website listing in and use targeted keyphrases in both your title and description.
 

Strategy 3: Social Bookmarking Links

Social Bookmarking communities are essentially websites that allow users categorise and recommend sites to the community that they like or have found useful information on. Social Bookmarking websites generate millions of daily traffic so they provide great SEO benefit as well as driving some of that traffic directly to your site. Social Bookmark communities such as Digg and Technorati allow you to quickly generate great quality links from high Page Rank and high authority websites.

Here’s how to create linking opportunities from Social Bookmarking sites:

- Register for a free account on each bookmarking website site making sure to include your website URL and description of your business with keywords when creating your profile.

- Create a system to organize the web pages you want to bookmark. One way of doing this is to create a ‘Bookmarks’ folder within your web browser toolbar.

- Create a folder for every day of the week, so that you can easily submit your links to the top bookmarking websites regularly, without posting to the same site twice in any given day. (This is something you REALLY want to avoid!).

- To start you off add between 5-10 bookmark sites into each of your bookmarks and then each day, load up these websites and submit your website as a new bookmark.

Below are some of the most popular Social Bookmarking networks to get you started:

Digg
SlashDot
Technorati
Furl
Mixx

Strategy 4: Become an Article Marketer

Article marketing is one of the best ways to generate a high amount of quality links to your site relatively quickly. To become an article marketer you’ll need a base of around 12-15 original articles that include your keywords within the title and body of the article itself. Each article should be around 350-400 words in length. Articles should be completely original and high quality so focus on writing about a subject you know lots about (probably something related to the industry you work in)

If you already have a blog then the good news is that you can use previous posts as a starting point for you articles.

Start by submitting your articles into the most popular directories. First submit your article to Ezine (the largest of these sites) and, after waiting for 24 hours, also submit your articles into the other highly ranked article-based directories.

When registering for each article directory you’ll be asked to create an author resource box. This resource box is where you tell the reader about the author (you!) and the box is tagged at the bottom of any article you have written. You are allowed to create links with your keywords in the author resource box and this is often the only place where a back-linking is permitted, so make sure you spend the time on creating your resource box.

Here are the top article directories that you should focus on submitting content to:

ArticlesBase
Buzzle
GoArticles
ArticlesFactory
ArticleSnatch
WebProNews
ArticleDashboard
SubmitYourNewArticle

Strategy 5: A Shameless Plug…

You know a shameless plug for our link building services is coming here but actually there’s very good reason to outsource your link building campaigns to an external company. Link building is not a difficult task but it is a time consuming one. Companies who specialise in online marketing and link building are set up to run multiple link building campaigns at one time and they have processes to be able to do what you could achieve at a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

That said, you CAN run a successful link building campaign without any professional external help. Hopefully what I have given you today are some ideas and tips to get started.

Good luck and if you liked this article why not link to it?!

Link Building is an extremely important factor in SEO but is Google wrong to give it such weight?

 

Link Building for SEO is a big buzz area and has been for at least the past two years. To explain link building simply; Google puts huge importance on the number of external links you have pointing to your website. The higher quantity of ‘good quality’ links you have pointing to your website then the higher up the rankings you go.

 

The very essence of the idea I get. Google believes that if you have a high number of reputable websites linking to you then by virtue you must have relevant content that people want to visit. You then gain more credibility in Google’s view and increase your search engine ranking as a result.

 

What’s the Problem Then?

 

There are two major problems with this approach:

 

1. Without doubt, it punishes the small-to-medium sized business owner

 

Imagine you run a huge news website such as the BBC or the Times Online. Clearly you are providing news content to a large number of people and you already have a reputation for being amongst the premier news outlets in the UK. Therefore people are always linking to you – sharing news stories on social media, publishing links on forum threads, even referencing your stories on their websites and blogs.  As a result your large news website is given a lot of ‘authority’ on the search engines.

 

Now imagine you run a huge corporation such as Coca-Cola. You are always featured in the online and offline press - people are talking online about your latest adverts, large news websites are producing stories on your latest financial results and you’re a huge talking point on all social media platforms. So, because of all this you have a huge number of reputable websites linking to you and therefore you gain a massive search engine advantage.

 

Now imagine you run a smaller online business – maybe you’re selling a niche product online that isn’t particularly exciting – let’s say you’re selling packaging solutions for businesses (cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, etc). You can build the best site in the world, optimise the hell out of it, stick to all the best web standards – even regularly update a blog with the latest industry news and insight. Let’s face it though, the BBC, Times Online, people on forums, the social networking community and blog owners aren’t going to link to you are they? Why would they? Your product isn’t that exciting, albeit that your site is well optimised and you are providing a valuable product and service to those searching for it.

 

Ok, I know you’ve got to be creative and think of innovative ways to encourage linking but it’s going to be an uphill struggle.

 

2. It’s a magnet for scams and ‘get rich quick’ schemes

 

Bear in mind the struggle for the small business owner as described above. So what can a smaller business do to easily build links to their website? They can add their link to the huge number of web directories that appear to be popping up here, there and everywhere. These web directories are supposed to provide a valuable directory service for people using the web but all they actually provide is a completely useless website that is solely designed to add links to. Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of reputable directories such as Yell, Dmoz and Yahoo but there is also a huge amount of non reputable directories that charge to put your link on and actually provide no benefit from an SEO point of view. The problem is, for the non-SEO savvy it’s actually very difficult to tell the difference between a reputable and non-reputable directory.

 

In addition to this, there are a growing number of companies (many based overseas) that sell business owners a ‘link building service’ that actually does more harm than good. By gaining links from a huge number of non-reputable directory sites these companies are actually jeopardising the SEO results of their customers!

 

As more and more of these directories and ‘get rich quick’ link building services appear they actually detract from the overall internet experience.

 

I understand why link building is important and I’m not suggesting Google dumps it completely, but isn’t it time to reconsider how important it is in the overall picture? Don’t we need to give smaller, more niche and new online businesses more of a chance against the big players?

It’s a new year and what better way to start it off than by predicting the top 5 marketing trends and predictions for 2011. Believe me, there’s a whole lot more than 5 with things, as always, moving at a fast rate of noughts – especially in the online marketing world.

In the interest of brevity and keeping things simple though let’s stick to the top 5:

1. Price and value will be key communication messages

With higher rates of inflation, the increase of VAT, even steeper fuel prices and much, much more, in 2011 consumers will see their money not stretch as far as it used to. This will have a knock on effect on what marketing messages consumers respond positively to and price and value will be a key area. This doesn’t necessarily mean the cheaper the better but brands and retailers will be keen to communicate good value in 2011. We’ve already seen a number of advertising messages over the past couple of weeks offering to ‘beat the VAT rise’ and keep prices at the previous rate. Expect a lot more where this came from as well as more upmarket retailers such as John Lewis continuing to promote their ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ value propositions.

2. Social and mCommerce Will Become More Prominent

As the uptake of smart phones and social networking continues to grow exponentially, expect to see both of these provide new ways for us to consume products.

mCommerce (basically ecommerce on mobile devices) has been a bit of a slow starter but as the technology continues to develop expect to see the purchasing of products on your smart phone increasingly commonplace.

Social networking has proven a great way for brands to engage with their customers and in 2011 you can expect this to go even further with the possibility of purchasing products directly from Facebook. If someone in your network purchases a product then they can choose to share this on their wall – providing an extremely powerful referral effect. This provides an exciting prospect for businesses to turn their social media presence into tangible product sales.

In 2011 brands both large and small will have a great opportunity to use these two new technologies to their advantage. As a result the importance of having a multi-platform ecommerce business will increase tenfold.

3. Smaller Groups and Smaller Networks are the Way Forward

Since it is, without doubt, the most important marketing trend at the moment, let’s stay on social networking.

Although social networking platforms such as Facebook continue to grow and grow their user base, consumers will begin to split their networks into smaller groups or use a selection of new, niche social networking platforms to engage with different groups they’re involved with.

Something that has been identified as more people use social networking is that individuals don’t want to share the same information with everyone in their network. Whether they are a work connection, someone from their football team, a school friend or a family member, individuals want to communicate with each of these groups differently – not in a holistic manner.

Facebook has already brought out the new Groups feature in 2010 (see more here) and in 2011 we will see this adopted more widely as well as other new methods of segmenting a users audience.

The brands that follow this closely, understand the implications and act on them accordingly will perform best in social media in 2011.

4. Online Search Will Change (Nothing New There Then!)

Online search is continually changing and when it comes to optimising websites for search engines this means the goal posts are always moving. This can’t be avoided though – Google need to continue to innovate and provide us with the most relevant search results.

In 2011 it is not clear exactly what is coming but here are some definites:

Local Searching

Google will begin to show users search results from their local area more prominently – even if the user is not specifically searching locally. To me this is a bad move in many ways. Ok, you may be searching for a dry cleaner and one in the local area would definitely be of benefit but what if you run an ecommerce business selling products across the UK – is locality really a major factor in that case?

Google Instant

Google Instant came out in late 2010 and the jury is still out in terms of how it affects searching behaviour. Look out for the first signs of this kind of research coming out within the next couple of months because it will have an effect on how your business should successfully optimise your site.

Social Search

Yep sorry I’m harping on about social networking again! Google have already began to index tweets in their search results and, at the same time, Facebook will definitely become more geared towards searching for products and services within the ‘social sphere’.

Whether it is Google, Facebook or others who pioneer this, search results will eventually take into account sites that those in your social network have also searched for. As always, companies keeping abreast of these trends and what they mean for their marketing strategy will perform best in 2011.

 

5. Will TV Advertising Make a Comeback?

Lets face it; TV advertising is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be. With technology such as Sky+, the fragmentation of television audiences and, of course, the advent of the Internet and consumption of online media, television advertising just doesn’t have the same mass audience any more.

As a format though, the 30-second TV ad will actually grow in popularity. With online streaming, digital TV streaming and the new advertising model for sites such as YouTube, there is now once again space for the traditional TV advertising format. In addition to this, the technology available today means that the production of a 30 second advert is now much more cost-effective for small and large businesses alike. Could this be the ‘bringing back to life’ of the TV ad?

Anyway that’s it – now lets wait and see if I’m right!

Part 4 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the second stage of planning for VanLeasingQuotes.com

Last week I talked about the keyword analysis and website planning for VanLeasingQuotes.com. We looked at how to identify the best keywords and then use these to create the site navigation.

This week it’s time for the next stage of the planning process, which is beginning to think about what will be included on each page and sketching out where each piece of content will go.

VanLeasingQuotes.com is a great example of a large e-commerce based website that has many landing pages, many different products and many different bits of functionality. The trick is not in building a site than can do everything we want it to and hold all this information - the trick is in presenting this information in the easiest and most intuitive way for the user when they come onto the site. The more information, products and functionality you have on a site, the more you have to create an intuitive way for it to be organised.

Get this part right, and we save ourselves a lot of time in the next stages of the process and the end result will convert a higher percentage of site visitors into solid enquiries.

So we start by referring to the site navigation, which has now been signed off by the client. We look at the main landing pages and how the site is structured to think about the number of different page templates we will require. Every page on a site is different but defining the different groups of pages and creating a page template to use as a starting point for each will create a consistent feel across the whole website.

For VanLeasingQuotes.com we defined 3 groups of pages:

- Main landing pages

- Multiple product display pages

- Single product display pages

Next we get our pens out! A great little piece of advice I got a couple of years ago from the guys at 37 signals is to never use biro pens for sketching – always use a nice thick marker because it prevents you from going into to much irrelevant detail too early in the project.

Basically we start sketching a few ideas out for the main page groups and get each other’s opinions on things. After a few attempts we have usually defined a layout for each that contains all the required information and functionality in the right places.

What we have in mind all the time is providing a number of different, intuitive ways for users to navigate around the site. For VanLeasingQuotes.com we have 4 main ways of navigating around the site:

- Complete a 3-field search that automatically drills down and takes you to an exact product

- Search by manufacturer

- Search by size of van

- Clicking directly on one of the featured products

The picture at the top of this post shows the initial sketch for the homepage. We have made the search functionality very prominent and just below the main header statement and image. Underneath the search options we have a featured product section. It is extremely important to have products on your homepage if you’re building an e-commerce style website – it shows visitors immediately that you are selling the product they’re looking for without them having to think or investigate whatsoever. Underneath this section we have more text-based information for those who want to know more and also to help SEO.

This is great but the fact of the matter is, because of the way SEO works and the site is designed, most users won’t come in through the homepage. Each user will land on the site having done a specific web search and might land directly on a product or manufacturer page. This fact combined with others means that the site needs to be just as easy to navigate from an individual product page as it is from the homepage. We spend a lot of time making sure each of the templates provides a consistent and easy way to use the site.

Once we have sketched everything out the next job is for the actual design to start but I’ll leave that for Robert to start on next week.

Speak to you all soon!

Part 3 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the website planning and keyword strategy for VanLeasingQuotes.com

First off let me say this: website planning and keyword strategy are by far the most important parts of building an effective online business… they're also by far the most overlooked.

The simple fact is that, no matter what nature of business you run or what kind of website you’re about to build, you should do one thing: answer the right question. You should answer the specific question or questions that your target customers are asking.

What are their questions? Their questions, quite simply, are their search terms; the terms your target customers type into a search engine when searching for your goods or services.

There are 3 parts to answering these questions correctly:

Make sure you know what the questions are…

Don’t assume that you know what your target customers will be searching for. Do the appropriate research to find out the best keywords to target

Make sure your hand is up when the question’s asked…

In other words, make sure you appear as high up as possible in the search rankings when someone searches one of your identified key search terms

Make sure you answer the question correctly…

This is the final hurdle so many fall at! Once a user has clicked on your link make sure you provide them with the exact content they were searching for in the first place. What so many do is build a website targeted at a huge amount of keywords and build a site solely designed to increase search engine ranking. The problem with this is that you end up providing the user with uninteresting, irrelevant content. The potential customer takes no further action and goes elsewhere.

Now lets look at the simple, all be it methodical, process we used when planning the VanLeasingQuotes.com website:

Define the Purpose of the Website

We’ve covered this in previous posts:

"The website will provide an easy, intuitive way for users to browse a catalogue of over 1,000 different models of commercial vehicle. Not only this but it will allow users to generate an online customised quote for their chosen van, print or save it and then apply for a lease agreement online. "

Identify Relevant Keywords

We use software programs including Wordtracker and Google Developer Tools to analyse what people are searching for online. We spend hours researching a huge number of different areas to find keywords relating to the website we’re building – in this case VanLeasingQuotes.com. What we’re looking for is, not only search terms that are highly popular, but also search terms that are the least competitive. If there are less companies optimising for certain terms but they’re still popular then you’re onto a winner! This can be calculated using a formula called KEI and KEI3 scores (I won’t bore you all with the maths bit of it!).

Lump Keywords Together

With VaneasingQuotes.com we had around 20-30 relevant keywords picked out that the client was happy to go with. Now we start lumping into relevant groups of subjects. So in this case there were terms relating to leasing, contract hire, lease purchase, finance advice and individual van manufacturer related searches.  By grouping these together we begin to see how we might organise the website.

Create a List of Pages

This is the great thing about doing keyword analysis before you start thinking about navigation – you are now creating pages that will more closely meet what people are looking for. This invariably leads to much better results when the site goes live. After the keyword analysis for VanLeasingQuotes.com we all had a much clearer vision in our head of how the website would take shape and now we simply name pages based on our groups of keywords.

We create a spreadsheet that contains the name of each page and the primary and secondary keywords we will optimise each page for.

Pull it all Together into the Site Navigation

Now we have a list of pages it’s about pulling together the site navigation. This process isn’t all about SEO - creating a site that’s intuitive and easy to navigate around is also a big consideration. With a big site like VanLeasingQuotes.com there will be a lot of pages. Also, because each page will be optimised for different search terms, a user could come into the site through anyone of these pages, not necessarily the homepage. This means we had make sure it will be easy to navigate from everywhere.

As you can see from the picture at the top of the blog, we sketch out the navigation on a big A3 or A1 sheet of paper and spend a lot of time mixing things about until we get it right.

Hopefully this has given you a good overview of the initial planning stages of a website. Next week it’s me again and I’m going to be looking at the net planning stage, which involves deciding on content for each page and sketching out rough web page layouts. I’ll warn you in advance – my sketching ability is pretty atrocious!

Speak to you next week

Ryan

Truth be told, Search Engine Optimisation is a bit of a black art. It’s easy to see the results but its often not clear what work actually goes in to making your website rank highly in the search engines.

There’s actually a very good reason for that though – it’s a vast mix of different tasks and ongoing work that go in to improving your ranking over time. If you buy a book on SEO (there are many) you will quickly see just how many factors effect your search engine results and the thousands of different things you can do to make a difference.

I want to demystify SEO in this post and, although I don’t have the time or energy to list absolutely everything you can be doing to improve your ranking, I can provide you with the top 10 factors that affect SEO. This will hopefully give you a better idea of what’s involved and also give you a few things you can do to improve your own search engine ranking.

Here goes:

1. Have a Keyword Strategy

Like anything you do in business, having a clear strategy will make for better results. It never ceases to amaze me how many people optimise their website for search terms just because they presume people are searching for them. There are a number of methods to be able to analyse what people are searching for and how many other businesses are optimising their sites for these terms. Plan carefully and you can optimise your website for great search terms that your competitors have missed.

2. It’s All About Clean Code

It’s difficult to explain to clients why a well coded website is so important. This is no surprise because often to the untrained eye the actual design of a well coded website will look exactly the same as a badly coded version. The reason it’s so important is that Google wants to promote high web standards and therefore will rank a site higher if it’s well coded and much lower if it’s badly coded.  This means you want to make sure you take on a reputable company or freelancer to design your website, which is easy if you ask the right questions. 

3. Content is King

Content is King – simple as that. Search Engines want to return search results for users that match exactly what they’ve searched for. So the more relevant text content you have on your website about your product and services then the better chance you have of ranking highly.

4. Keep it Fresh

Update your site on a regular basis. Another thing search engines want to provide users with is up to date content and the more you update your site then the more you are seen as a current, relevant business. The more you update, the higher you go!

5. Keep it Simple

The best websites are simple, clean and easy-to-understand so keep it simple. Also, using Flash elements on your website has a negative effect on SEO so avoid using it. This should be easy because today you can create many of the same effects using Java Script and CSS.

6. Build Links

Search Engines will rank you higher if you have other reputable websites linking to your site. Lots of companies claim to be able to create lots of links to your site in a very short period of time, but it’s actually getting links from quality websites that takes the time and will make the difference. Link building is a blog post in its own right but there are many ways of encouraging others to link to your site. 

7. Don’t Keep ‘Em Waiting!

Google now also rank search results according to ‘page weight’. This means a focus on keeping down file sizes and page loading times will help you in the Search Engines.

8. Sell With Your URL

Naming the URL extension for each of your pages according to its search term will increase SEO results. So for instance, we’re building a new web page on Web Copywriting at the moment. The identified search term we are using is ‘Search Engine Copywriting’ so our URL will be: brinnmarketing.com/search-engine copywriting*

* Always separate each word after the / with a – because it allows the search engine robots to recognise each individual word’

9. Give Google a Map

Generating a sitemap for your website will provide Google and other search engines with an easier way to find their way around your site and this will help SEO. If you haven’t heard of a sitemap there are a number of software applications out there that allow you to automatically generate one for your site.

10. Meta Description (whatever the hell that means!)

This is the text you see under the page title for every search result on Google. Many don’t understand how important this is in getting people to click on your website.  Keep it short and use it as an opportunity to sell your business and make people click!

WHY SEO KEYWORD ANALYSIS IS THE PERFECT MARKETING TOOL

Undertaking keyword analysis at the start of any online project is one of the key factors that will determine its success or failure but you’d be surprised how many people either just leave this stage out or do it too late in the process to have the most positive effect.

 

When you think about it, keyword analysis is the perfect marketing tool. Marketing is all about identifying the needs and wants of consumers and then meeting them with your product or service - effective keyword analysis lets you do exactly that.

 

Keyword Analysis lets you research and identify what consumers are searching for online and, in relative terms, how many companies are out there already optimising their online offers to cater for these ‘searchers’. So, if you spend the time identifying the best search terms related to your product and service at the start, you can then build an online offer around these search terms therefore meeting exactly what consumers are searching for (their wants and needs) and in turn ensuring better online results for your business.

 

DOES IT NEED TO BE DONE RIGHT AT THE START?

 

Absolutely! Keyword analysis should be the first major step in the process when you’re looking to develop a new website. It should be done before you even start thinking about what content you might want to put on the site, how you might want to organise the different product and services you offer and before you start thinking about a layout for the website.

 

The reason for this is that if you do the keyword analysis a bit further on in the process, you already have pre-conceived ideas about what you want to say on the site and how you want to organise the information. Remember, marketing is about meeting the needs and wants of consumers so you should actually be building and structuring your new site around what they’re searching for so that you can best provide a solution to their problem. The findings of your keyword research should inform all the decisions you make in every key stage of the development process.

 

So for instance, if you run an online business selling speciality tea and you had not completed the keyword analysis at the start when building your website, you might decide that the Ginger and Lime variety of your tea would just sit within the Fruit tea section within the site. You’ve already mapped out the structure and the product fits in nicely within this section. You have mapped out your site structure based on what you feel makes the most sense – so teas are split up into logical product groupings such as Green Tea, Fruit Tea, Specialty Tea and Herbal Tea. You think this will make the most sense to the user when they come onto your site.

 

However, if you had completed Keyword Analysis right at the start, you may find that the way you decide to structure your site is completely different. You actually find that Ginger and Lime tea is quite a strong search term – there are lots of people searching for it and there’s not a lot of competition. However, when you look at the term ‘fruit tea’ you find that it’s too general, there’s too much competition and not as many people searching for it as you might think. So, this would completely change your way of thinking when it comes to structuring the site and, when it comes to building the actual pages, you are now in a position to better match your offering to what potential customers are searching for.

 

So, as you can see, if you complete keyword analysis at the start of the process, your results will be better.

 

A FUTURE EXPERIMENT

 

We’re so confident in the power of effective SEO and Keyword Analysis as a marketing tool that last week we came up with an experiment that we’d really like to undertake at some point in the New Year. The idea is that, if we weren’t restricted at all by the services we have the ability to offer here at Brinn Marketing, what search terms could we identify (related to any product or service at all) and could we build an effective successful business around these terms? So we would have no pre-conceived ideas at all about what kind of online business we would create - it’s all about finding the effective search terms first (identifying customers’ wants and needs) and then building an online business around it – so marketing in its absolute purest form.

 

Unfortunately we really don’t have the time to do this at the moment but if we do manage to make time to do this in the New Year we’ll keep you posted.